Cretan Greek
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet) |
| Proto-Greek (c. 2000 BC)
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| Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)
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| Ancient Greek (c. 800–300 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Pamphylian; Homeric Greek. Possible dialect: Macedonian. |
| Koine Greek (from c. 300 BC)
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| Medieval Greek (c. 330–1453)
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| Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Cappadocian,Cretan, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Yevanic |
Cretan Greek (Cretan dialect, Greek: Κρητική διάλεκτος or Kritika Κρητικά) is a dialect of the Greek language, spoken by more than half a million people in Crete and several thousands in the diaspora.
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[edit] Geographic distribution
The Cretan dialect is spoken by the majority of the Cretan Greeks in the island of Crete, as well as by several thousands of Cretans who have settled in major Greek cities, notably in Athens. In the major centers of the Greek diaspora the dialect is continued to be used by the Cretans, mainly in the United States, Australia and Germany. In addition, a number of Cretan Muslims are reported to use the dialect in everyday speech. In Turkey, in the areas Cretan Turks settled after the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations in 1923, the dialect is still in use by older people. An interesting case is the coastal Syrian town of Al Hamidiyah and the neighbouring territories of Lebanon, where the dialect of the Cretan settlers of 1897 is preserved by their descendants.
[edit] Usage and settings
The Cretan dialect is rarely used in written speech. However, Cretan Greeks usually communicate with each other in this dialect. It also important to note that Cretan Greek is not much different from the other Greek dialects or Standard Greek, something that has as a result is mutual intillegibility. There are many organisations of Cretans aiming to preserve their culture, including thei dialect; To this day the dialect does not seem to be in danger of extinction. Some academians state that the Cretan dialect had the potential to become the basis of Modern Standard Greek, having in mind its flourishing history and achievements. According to them, this process was interrupted violently in 1669, when the Ottomans conquered the island.
[edit] History
The Cretan dialect, as well as all modern Greek dialects (with the exception of Tsakonian and, to some extend, Griko), evolved from Koine. Its structure and vocabulary has preserved archaic features, due to the distance of Crete from the main Greek centers. Infuences by other languages can also be found. The conquest of Crete by the Arabs in 824 left mainly toponyms. The Venetian influence, however, was proven to be the strongest, since the island remained under Venetian control for nearly 5 centuries. To this day, many toponyms, names and words stem from the Italian language of early modern times, which came to reenforce the Latin infuence from antiquity and the early Byzantine Empire. Following the Ottoman conquest of 1669, Turkish words entered the vocabulary of Cretans as well. It must be noted though, that borrowings and elements of other languages are mainly concentrated in the Cretan vocabulary, whereas the grammar and syntax of Cretan Greek was, in general, not affected. With the beginning of the 20th century and the evolution of technology and tourism, English, French and German terms are widely used.
[edit] Literature
According to some philologists, the first works of Modern Greek were written in the Cretan dialect during the 16th century (others consider the beginning of modern Greek literature as early as the 10th century, with the first work being the epic poem of Digenis Acritas). Erotokritos is undoubtedly the masterpiece of the Cretan literature, and perhaps the supreme achievement of modern Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553-1613). In over 10,000 lines of rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets, the poet relates the trials and tribulations suffered by two young lovers, Erotokritos and Aretousa, daughter of Heracles, King of Athens. It was a tale that enjoyed enormous popularity among its Greek readership and succeeded in making itself something of a folk hero, whose pedigree was as brother to Digenis Acritas and Alexander the Great. The poets of the period of Cretan literature (15th-17th centuries) used the spoken Cretan dialect, freed of the medieval vernacular. The tendency to purge the language of foreign elements was above all represented by Chortatsis, Kornaros and the anonymous poets of Voskopoula and The Sacrifice of Abraham, whose works highlight the expressive power of the dialect. As dictated by the pseudo-Aristotelian theory of decorum, the heroes of the works use a vocabulary analogous to their social and educational background. It was thanks to this convention that the Cretan comedies were written in a language that was an amalgam of Italicisms, Latinisms and the local dialect, thereby approximating to the actual language of the middle class of the Cretan towns. The time span separating Antonios Achelis, author of the Siege of Malta (1570), and Chortatsis and Kornaros is too short to allow for the formation, from scratch, of the Cretan dialect we see in the texts of the latter two. The only explanation, therefore, is that the poets at the end of the sixteenth century were consciously employing a particular linguistic preference – they were aiming at a pure style of language for their literature and, via that language, a separate identity for the Greek literary production of their homeland.
The flourishing Cretan school was all but terminated by the Turkish capture of the island in the 17th century. The ballads of the klephts, however, survive from the 18th century; these are the songs of the Greek mountain fighters who carried on guerrilla warfare against the Turks.
Nikos Kazantzakis, though he mainly wrote in standard Greek, uses in his works many Cretan elements. Not only many characters in his novels are Cretans, but also they appear to speak in the Cretan dialect, giving to his work an alledged revival of the written literature in of this dialect. He is paradoxically the best-known Greek novelist outside Greece: paradoxically, because he himself rated his poetry and dramas far above his novels, to which he devoted himself seriously only during the last decade of his life. Paradoxically, too, because Kazantzakis has tended to be regarded more highly in international circles than at home. His wanderings temporarily halted by the occupation of Greece during the Second World War, Kazantzakis in the winter of 1941-2, at the age of fifty-eight, began work on the novel that would mark his second début in Greek literature. This was Zorba the Greek. Zorba was the first of seven novels (if we count the autobiographical Report to Greco, on which he was still working at the time of his death) that Kazantzakis wrote in his final years, and on which his international reputation now principally rests.
